PRELUDE.

I once swore indignantly, for purely political reasons, that I would never set foot in
the Cayman Islands—despite its obvious lure for scubadivers. It took an
invitation from Doc Vikingo, several years later, to get me to reconsider. I was
honored—humbled, really—to join a cadre of raucous, fun-loving, highly skilled
divers set to visit Cayman Diving Lodge during Thanksgiving week, 2004. We
exchanged huge numbers of anticipatory emails in string after string of inbox-
clogging silliness.

Hurricane Ivan changed things abruptly, washing away our entire destination, and
the tone of the emails changed just as abruptly to something more goal-directed.
What now? Doc, ever-resourceful and patient, cobbled together a replacement trip
in short order, securing the group’s assent on critical decisions as they came up.
What we wound up with, within just days, was a week at Sunset Waters Resort
on the lovely island of Curaçao.

The emails continued as we embraced our new location. The biggest concern, for
some, was that nowhere on the whole island could you find a single bottle of
Patrón. Not that I had any idea what Patrón was. I just knew some members of
the group were so enamored of the stuff that they prepared to bring in their own
supply. I have since learned that Patrón is a justifiably highly prized 100% Agave
Tequila, that it produces the most delightful legal buzz I’ve ever experienced
(other than diving, of course), that it gives you really strange dreams, and that it
is sipped and savored, not thrown back, from a shotglass. Ahhhhhh. Dat’s some
good shit, lemmetellya.

ALLEGRETTO: FLYING SOUTH

Our group consisted of the aforementioned organizeur extraordinaire—Doc—plus
AngieD, DrCraig, LarryL, his wife, Annette, and their always entertaining sons
Zachary and Nicholas, JudyG, Papa, Marco, FSUScubaBoo, ScubaDawg,
Jonathan and a non-D2D but very cool guy named Steve. It was one of us who
gave Steve his new D2D name: TheKneelingMan, the meaning of which I will not
divulge. With the exception of Boo and Dawg, who came a day early, we
converged on Curaçao on Saturday, November 20. I met up with Judy, my roomie
who was flying in from Northwestern Canada, Friday evening in Miami, and we
enjoyed a lovely evening in SoBe to set the tone for the trip.

About half of us touched down at 2-ish on the American Airlines flight from MIA.
A few others didn’t arrive until well into the evening. Marco almost didn’t make it
at all, but to everyone’s great relief toughed it out and made the journey. Judy and
Papa and I had sworn off drinks mid-flight because we wanted to dive that very
afternoon. Which we did. Transfers went pretty smoothly, though there wasn’t
room on the one van for all of us and our luggage, so they had to use a second
one. And not everyone found their luggage waiting in their rooms as quickly as it
should have appeared.

ANDANTE MODERATO:
CURAÇAO AND SUNSET WATERS

Curaçao is a large mountainous island located 44 miles north of Venezuela in the
extreme southern Caribbean. Sunset Waters is on the Northwestern coast, so if
you face the beach and turn your head to the right you see some incredible
sunsets. Thus the name. Except for occasional natural and manmade beaches,
the edge of the island is one continuous line of limestone and compressed,
fossilized hard coral that drops vertically to the sea—maybe 10 or 20 feet high in
some places, with undercuts and even caves. At the resort itself, the bluff was
more like 50 feet, with a road leading down to a beach. From our room, even with
the patio door closed tight, we could hear the ocean directly below—a natural
sonic sleep-inducer. You know those soundscape sleep machines at the Nature
Store? To simulate the sound of gently lapping waves on a beach the
manufacturer hung a microphone from our patio.

There was an excellent reason why we kept the patio door closed. In the 3 weeks
before our arrival, the normally arid island (Exhibit A: enough cactus to make you
think you’re in Texas) had received a year’s worth of rain. Which bred huge
concentrations of brash, pushy mosquitos. Even if there had been a screen on
the patio door, it would’ve been no match for these guys. Memo to you, dear
reader, if you go: BRING BUG SPRAY. Apply liberally, downwind from food and,
especially, from Patrón.

The resort is well kept up but not ultra-luxurious, which is perfect for most divers’
purposes. There’s a pool with swim-up bar, a large open-air pavilion that houses
both the main bar and the dining room, with steep stairs leading down to the
beach. At beach level there is a shallow lagoon protected by 2 inward-curving
breakwaters with an opening between them. It was through this opening, maybe
30 feet wide, that I commenced my first ever shore dive. More on that later.
There’s also a smaller beach pavilion with a small bar where they sometimes
serve dinners. The beach is also home to the dive operation. More on that later,
too.

The food, which is included in the package, was often slow to arrive and rarely
worth waiting for. On a good day it was somewhere between OK and good. One
night the chef put something he called “Paella” on the menu with a $3 surcharge.
Had I been the chef, I’d have given people money to eat it, not charged them
extra. To be fair, when I sent mine back, they quickly replaced it with a decent
pork loin. At lunchtimes, we all learned to go with the club sandwiches instead of
the daily offerings. At one point, after a long morning of dives we called ahead
from the boat and pre-ordered 13 of them. On an up note, there was a pretty good
lobster tail dinner one night, free despite our agreement to a surcharge because
they had to use frozen ones. Also Thanksgiving dinner was respectable except
for the liver-ish blob they called stuffing.

The staff at Sunset Waters was generally polite but most were somewhere
between reserved and downright aloof. A few notable exceptions include the
manager, Jim, and his wife, Gaynor; the bartenders, all of them; plus one of the
staff in the restaurant, Mayra, who always laughed politely at Jonathan’s jokes,
which by his own admission were a little lame. Then there was the Egg Nazi, who
stood in stark and forbidding contrast. I stuck with pancakes and English muffins
all week.

SCHERZO: THE DIVE OPERATION

The all-inclusive package includes a 2-tank boat dive every morning, plus all the
shore diving you can do. Unlimited EAN is $120 extra for the week. There’s also
a single-tank afternoon boat dive one day and a night dive on another day. You
store your gear in a cage area near the boat, and everyone is given a key for use
when they lock up. Hang your BC and reg on a numbered hanger and the staff
has your gear set up and waiting for you in the morning. You just carry your other
stuff (wetsuits, fins, mask, etc.) in a plastic laundry bin to the boat. The staff also
changes out your tank for you during the surface interval. At the end of the boat
dive, they rinse your BC and reg and hang them up to dry. If you don’t use your
gear again in the afternoon, they move it to the cage, which is locked at about
4pm. It’s a terrific system, arrived at seemingly through continuous process
refinement. Fills were consistently between 2600 and 2800 psi.

The boat is roomy, wide and easily accommodates 14 or 15 divers plus 2 or 3
crew members. Manager Kevin was appropriately fussy-yet-relaxed in his
attention to detail and turned out to be an excellent drinking buddy. The uber-
exuberant Carlos and the gorgeous yet competent Curtis (first words to me: “No
smacking my ass.” Hmmm.) were just great. Carlos’ natural enthusiasm does not
respect hangovers, but you gotta love the guy anyway. Another dive staffer,
Lynne, complied gamely when I asked her, in the middle of her otherwise
workmanlike site briefing, to PUH-LEEEEEZ leave her rattling noisemaker on the
boat. She didn’t think this was funny at all. On that same dive, which was early in
the week, there was wee bit o’ current, prompting us to ascend using the mooring
line. When the gloveless Jonathan asked for something to soothe his badly beat-
up hands, she produced neither vinegar nor meat tenderizer nor an adequate
excuse for not having either. This was the last time during our stay that Lynne
worked on the boat, which was probably best.

You can follow the DM or go off on your own. We generally did the latter and were
never hassled about our same-ocean approach. Except for one morning when we
were running late, no one hassled us about extended bottomtimes, either. Most
dives lasted more than a very satisfying hour.

MAESTOSO: THE DIVING

This was the most serene diving I’ve done in a long time. For the most part there
was no current whatsoever in Curaçao. Even the soft corals just hung there like
willow trees on a stifling summer day. You just kick… and g - l - i - d - e… for a
good 70 or 80 minutes and then surface with a big smile on your face. In a couple
of instances there was enough current to justify a drift dive, and even then the
current tended to peter out. On many dives there was a thermocline at 90 feet or
more, usually with a visible demarcation that looked mysterious and cool. Above
the thermo, water temps were a constant 84 Oceanic® degrees. The entire
second half of the trip I wore my 7mm hyperstretch, a polartek hood and 10#.
Most people would be fine in a 3mm.

There’s a wall just off the coast that generally takes you to sand at about 120 or
130 feet or in some cases deeper. Some dives, notably Mushroom Forest, were
just enchanting. I kept hearing Grieg’s Peer Gynt music in my head and expected
trolls to appear. My favorite, though, was Porto Mari, with its three distinct coral
mountains and sloping sand channels between them. Here the thermo was at 115
fsw, and you could fly across from mountaintop to mountaintop or follow the lower
contours. Almost directly beneath the boat, a pair of eagle rays cavorted in the
sand, exfoliating themselves for Marc and me.

Basically, Curaçao is a place for coral and small stuff. Except for the rays at
Porto Mari and a couple of other sites, we saw very few big animals—not one
shark—though on one occasion we had a chance to snorkel with beaucoup
dolphins and did see a few turtles at depth. Gobs of hard and soft coral, as
mentioned, could be seen everywhere. I cannot recall ever seeing so much
mushroom coral, with heads that looked like giant shiitakes from 3 to more than
10 feet high. Extremely cool. And blue tube sponges were everywhere, facing in
every direction.

There was a spotted drum convention in town, though oddly not one single
juvenile was seen. Only the adults and intermediates came out; maybe the
children were home with the babysitter. There were also sharptail eels on
practically every dive. And morays everywhere. I saw my first dead spotted
moray on this trip. A few seahorses threw the photographers (meaning everyone
but me) into a frenzy. Black Durgons, one of my favorites, were nowhere to be
seen. Neither were groupers. We did spot several snappers but only a few were
legal-sized. A few bugs showed themselves, but true Florida bug-hunters would
be disappointed. There’s a ton o’ life on the reefs to behold, just don’t expect big
guys.

The house reef at Sunset Waters is healthy, endlessly fascinating and very
accessible. In the lagoon behind the breakwaters there are patches covered with
sand and others covered with rocks and hard dead coral. As I learned through
trial and error, if you wear booties you can just walk from the dive shop with fins
in hand across the beach, over the coral, to a shallow sand patch, don your fins
and float toward the opening. If you use full-foot fins, though, you take your gear
in a wheelbarrow to the far end of the beach, which is where the sand extends all
the way to the waterline. From the opening, head west using that round spinning
thingy on the end of your computer or console and you’ll soon be at the wreckage
of a Cessna in about 25 fsw at the edge of the wall. There’s also scattered
airplane debris further down the wall. From here you can go left, right or down;
either way you’ll see surprisingly healthy reef structures with critters to match. In
the sand at about 125 fsw there is another metal structure. Typically we did at
least one shore dive on the house reef every afternoon. Judy and Craig and
others sometimes got up before breakfast to do a dawn shore dive. Cool idea in
theory but I never quite got it together to pull it off. The light was supposedly
better at that hour. Personally, I found the light at 6:15 am perfect for going back
to sleep.

CADENZA & CODA: CONCLUSIONS

On any dive trip that involves an established group, it’s the people that make or
break the trip. And the folks on this trip helped to make it one of the best
Thanksgivings in memory. We came from different backgrounds and had wildly
differing political and other views but there wasn’t a moment when I didn’t feel
thrilled to be in such delightful company. Our group was joined by two very cool
people who just happened to be there anyway and were not scared off by our
behavior (which was neither exemplary nor dignified). Liz, from the UK and
Dahlia, from LA, actually found ways to add greater dimension and variety and we
all became fast friends. Were there a few things I would change about the resort
and the dive op? Sure. But on balance, Sunset Waters, as both a resort and a
dive op, is professional and genuinely interested in doing right by its customers.
And they succeed brilliantly in far more ways than they fall short. I would return in
a New York minute.

RECAPITULATION: DIVE DATA

#512: 11/20/04 House Reef. 70fsw for :52 on 32%.
#513: 11/21/04 Radio City. 90fsw for 1:13 on 34%.
#514: 11/21/04 Lost Anchor. 121fsw for 1:15 after :48 SI on 35%.
#515: 11/21/04 House Reef. 114fsw for :53 after 2:00 SI on 35%.
#516: 11/22/04 Porto Mari. 133fsw for 1:06 SI on 30%.
#517: 11/22/04 Long Beach. 131fsw for :55 after :45 SI on 30%.
#518: 11/22/04 House Reef. 118fsw for :47 after 2:29 SI on 32%.
#519: 11/23/04 Sponge Forest. 87fsw for :52 on 32%.
#520: 11/23/04 Mako Mountain. 108fsw for :51 after 1:04 SI on 32%.
#521: 11/23/04 House Reef. 121fsw for :41 after 2:31 SI on 32%.
#522: 11/24/04 Wata Mula. 74fsw for 1:08 on 32%.
#523: 11/24/04 Mushroom Forest. 105fsw for 1:20 after :50 SI on 32%.
#524: 11/24/04 House Reef. 86fsw for 1:08 after 2:24 SI on 31%.
#525: 11/25/04 College Station. 115fsw for 1:06 on 32%.
#526: 11/25/04 Tony’s Hole (no joke). 85fsw for 1:04 after :49 SI on 31%.
#527: 11/26/04 Santa Cruz. 69fsw for 1:11 on 33%.
#528: 11/26/04 Mushroom Forest Deep. 126fsw for 1:12 after :48 SI on 30%.
#529: 11/26/04 House Reef. 121fsw for :58 after 1:35 SI on 31%.

© Richard Salkin 2005